People offer their services but money needed most

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Aid agencies have been flooded with calls from volunteers
wishing to help out in tsunami-devastated areas but none are needed
and money is still the best thing Australians can give, even with
nearly $20 million already raised.

Doctors and nurses have been among the most vocal in offering
their support to the relief effort. About 80 to 84 per cent of the
calls that Centrelink's tsunami assistance hotline has received
have been from medical professionals offering time, said
Centrelink's spokesman, Bevan Hannan.

The names of the doctors have been passed to the Department of
Health, though they are not likely to be used.

It is less clear what Centrelink can do with some of the more
unusual offers of help that have flooded in. "I think one person
rang up and they had a barge," Mr Hannan said.

"They offered their barge to help with the clean-up. Someone had
an earthmover and they offered the earthmover and their husband to
operate it."

Some callers have even offered to adopt some of the orphaned
children.

The small number of agencies that will be sending Australian
volunteers overseas are only sending professionals who were were on
their books long before the tsunami hit on Sunday.

All six of the Australian volunteers that Medecins Sans
Frontieres is sending to Sri Lanka and Indonesia this week are
highly trained medical professionals with specialist disaster
training. Another 20 are on stand-by.

CARE Australia has now included a message on its website saying
it cannot accept goods, medical equipment and offers to
volunteer.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, yesterday echoed the calls of
aid agencies and urged the public to give cash.

"It is better to give cash than to give toys and goods because
the cost of transporting them and so forth and knowing where to
send them is difficult," he told Channel Seven.

And Australians are answering the calls. Donations to Australian
Red Cross alone total more than $10 million. Australians have
donated $4 million to World Vision, Oxfam has taken more than $2.5
million, while CARE Australia and UNICEF have raised more than $1
million each.

Agencies have stressed that money donated specifically to the
tsunami appeal will only be used for that purpose. Australian Red
Cross said it would not use more than 10 per cent of a donation for
its own costs.

CARE Australia will give 93 cents in the dollar directly to
disaster relief and Caritas Australia will give 92 cents in the
dollar.

While offers of time and expertise are being turned away for the
moment, expert volunteers - including engineers - may be needed
later. The acting executive director of Oxfam Community Aid Abroad,
Craig Barry, said more volunteers may be needed when the
reconstruction process begins in coming months. But for the moment
the organisation is only using volunteers from its Humanitarian
Relief Register.

"People have the greatest of intentions but there is actually
quite a lot of briefing and preparation that has to be done before
people are deployed in the field," he said. "As you can imagine,
some of them will be confronted with horrendous situations."